Ghost In The Machine: The MatrixTerminated!
by EmmettCole2129
Summary: A Matrix/Terminator Crossover! An AU Fanfic where the Terminator joins the Neb's crew to aid them in rescuing Neo from the Matrix and Agent Smith. Please R&R!
1. Chapter One: The Irony of Fate

Chapter One: The Irony of Fate

            Trinity liked to watch him.  It wasn't just because he was cute, either.  Morpheus was convinced that he was _The One_.  That is, he was the prophesied savior of mankind, whose coming would herald the destruction of the virtual reality cyber-prison called The Matrix.  Right now, though, he didn't look like anything but a regular guy with a bad case of insomnia.  She wished she could be there to calm his fears—to lay his anxiety to rest.  She would tell him that he was _The One_, and that he shouldn't be afraid…

            "All right," she thought to herself, albeit reluctantly, "he's _very cute."  _

            She sat back in the operator's chair of the _Nebuchadnezzar_, her ship, and let out a sigh.  

            "You like to watch him, don't you?" asked a man's voice behind her.  

            Startled, she whirled around to see a bald man with a goatee standing there, grinning like an idiot at having caught her in what had otherwise been a private moment—like catching a mischievous young girl with her proverbial "hand in the cookie jar."  

            "Cypher?  What the hell are you doing here?"

            He folded his arms across his chest and took a seat next to her.  

            "I could ask you the same thing.  You weren't supposed to relieve me, you know."  

            Trinity shrugged.  "I felt like taking a shift."  

            Cypher glanced at the screen, which to the casual observer would appear to be nothing more than dancing lines of computer code scrolling endlessly across the screen.  

            "You really believe all that stuff Morpheus says about this guy?"  

            Trinity stared at him angrily, her brow furrowed.  She was still more than a little annoyed that Cypher had all but barged in on her, and now he was attacking Morpheus, the man who had done them all a favor and set them all free.  

            "I'd like to believe it's true."  

            She narrowed her eyes.  "Why, don't you?"  

            It was Cypher's turn to shrug.  "I'll believe it when I see it.  I mean, come on.  Remember those _other guys?"  _

            "Everyone makes mistakes, Cypher."  

            He rolled his eyes.  

            "Yeah, but _five in a row?  Come on, Trin.  Ol' Morph's credibility is _seriously_ waning."  _

            She turned away from him, focusing her attention once more on the screen in front of her.  

            "Believe what you want, but it's going to be different this time.  You can bet on it."  

            Cypher sighed, got up out of his chair and turned to walk away when Trinity's screen changed from the dull green and black of the Matrix Computer Code to the stark red and white letters of the ship's warning system.  

            INCOMING MESSAGE, the "Neb's" computer told her, followed almost immediately by a crackle of static and a garbled radio transmission.  

            "Any ship…is Capt…nnor of…liath.  We are un…ack.  Need ass...nce."  

            A second dialog on the screen followed the broken voice of the man sending the distress call: PROXMITY WARNING.  

            "Shit!" Trinity swore, knowing at once what that meant before the Neb's radar screen brought up the source of the warning: another hovercraft, followed by a quintet of the squid-like patrol machines known as Sentinels.  

            "Goddamnit.  We've got Squiddies!"  

            As soon as the alarm had stopped, Cypher had frozen in his tracks.  Now he turned to face her, his former grin melted away into a severe frown.  

            "How many?"  

            Trinity shared his dismay, and her face showed it.  "Five.  Headed this way awfully fast.  Get the others."  

            He turned to do so, but they had already come running:  the muscular Apoc, the white-haired Switch, the gangly Mouse, Tank (Operator of the Neb), and her Captain, the smooth-talking, seemingly-always-calm Morpheus.  

            It was Morpheus who spoke first.  

            "What is going on?"  

            Cypher pointed at the screen.  "Squiddies…five of them, headed this way."  

            "There," Morpheus said, indicating the larger form of the other hovercraft.  "What ship is that?"  

            "I think it's the _Goliath_," Trinity said, making a quick check of her instruments.  

            Morpheus made a mental note.  "Captain Connor's ship…"

            "Connor?" Tank said.  "What's he doing way out here?  I thought he was back in Zion."  

            The Neb's Captain glanced at Trinity's instruments.  

            "We all have our reasons and our purposes, Tank, although I would guess they sent him for reconnaissance.  It is his specialty, after all."  

            "Well, whatever he's doing here, he's not going to be doing it very long," Cypher said.  "If these readings are right, they've taken quite a beating."  

            "Yeah," Mouse said, speaking from in between Switch and Apoc.  "And so will we if we don't do something."  

            Morpheus nodded, still calm despite all the pressure.  Though no one could fathom just how he could remain so focused, they all guessed it was what made him a good for the role of Captain.  

            "Trinity, take us down.  We're going to let Connor pass over us.  We'll only have a few seconds before the Sentinels get here, which means we've only got one shot at taking them out without taking out the _Goliath_, too."  

            Trinity nodded, and flipped open the plastic cover on a large red switch marked "Electromagnetic Pulse."  

            "Once we're in position, power down and prepare to fire the EMP."  

            Morpheus left Trinity's side and sat in his command chair at the center of what served as the Neb's "bridge."  

            Everyone held on as Trinity took the hovercraft into a steep dive, and then expertly leveled it out just before it hit the bottom of the decaying sewer duct in which they had been traveling.  

            Lights throughout the ship winked out one-by-one as it prepared for _extremely silent running.  It was the only way any of them would escape the wrath of the machines that would, without remorse, tear them all into tiny pieces.  _

            In a few minutes, they heard the humming of the _Goliath's_ engines as it passed over them, overlapped with the insect-like buzzing and whining of the machines internal servos as they swam like predators through the murky waters of the ancient sewers.  

            Hunting the human vermin that still seemed to infest the planet was not only their job, it was their reason for being—it was their life itself.  

            Unfortunately for them, however, their life would be cut short as Trinity let loose a barrage of deadly EM energy that shorted out the usually tough machinery that kept the ruthless killers alive.  They dropped like dead weight as the pulse struck them, and their lifeless hulks crashed harmlessly into the duct walls with the crunching and twisting of malformed metal.  

            Everyone on the bridge of the Neb let out a collective sigh of relief.  It seemed they had lived to die another day…

            The beeping of an incoming transmission on the communication system snapped them out of their all-too-brief revelry.  

            "_Goliath to __Nebuchadnezzar," a man's voice, the same as the previous transmission and so obviously Captain Connor's, said.  This time, however, he sounded relieved.  "Is that you, Morpheus?"  _

            "Indeed it is, Captain Connor," Morpheus replied.  

            "Goddamn, I'm sure glad you're here.  We would have been food for machine thought if you hadn't showed up.  But, damn, you came out of nowhere."  

            "I could say the same about you, Captain.  What brings you to our 'neck of the woods'?"  

            Connor chuckled.  "I know it isn't my usual stomping ground, Morpheus, but Deadbolt had us out scouting.  We were trying to see if there was any machinery up top we could use, anything left over from before the War."

            Morpheus arched an eyebrow, his interest piqued.  

            "And did you find anything?" he asked, a part of him hoping against hope that Connor had, among all the rubble, found something useful.  

            There was a brief pause, and then Connor answered, a tinge of hope in his otherwise battle-weary tone.  

            "As a matter of fact, I did.  Let's find a place to rest and stretch our legs, and I'll tell you all about it."  

            Morpheus glanced at his crew, who, like Connor, were all exhausted from all the fighting they were constantly forced to do for nothing more than their own very survival.  

            "Agreed."  

            An hour later, Morpheus, Trinity, and Cypher were walking through the corridors on the _Goliath, flanked on one side by the forty-something Captain John Connor, a tall man of medium build and deep, intense blue eyes, but whose most distinguishing feature was a long scar that ran down most of the length of the left side of his face.  _

            On their other side was Connor's aide-de-camp, Sergeant Kyle Reese, a man who bore a subtle resemblance to Connor, and, due to his age (he was twenty years Connor's junior), might be mistaken for the elder man's son.  

            Both were leading the Neb's crew through the maze of wires, catwalk and piping that led to the hovercraft's medical bay.  

            When they arrived, they saw nothing of interest in the facility save for what appeared to be a human form with a simple white sheet draped over it.  Reese and Connor stood on opposite sides of the examination table, while Morpheus, Trinity and Cypher settled in beside them.  All of them stared at the covered form, the Neb's crew especially anxious to find out what new tool Connor had discovered to help them turn the tide of the war.  

            Morpheus knew in his heart that it could not compare to what he had found, but he was curious nonetheless.  

            "Gentlemen," Connor said, adding "and lady" almost as an afterthought as he remembered Trinity, "meet the newest addition to our arsenal."  

            Reese pulled back the sheet to reveal what appeared to be a man in his late-thirties with close-cropped brown hair, icy gray eyes and an impressively sculpted physique.  The only trouble was, the "man" wasn't moving.  

            "A dead guy?"  Cypher scoffed.  "You mean to tell me that a corpse is going to help us take out the machines?"  

            Reese shook his head, not so much to say "no" as to balk at Cypher's obvious ignorance.  

            "It's not a man.  It's a machine…"  

            "A machine?" Cypher said, baffled by Reese's claim.  "That doesn't look like any one of _them I've ever seen."  _

            "It's a cyborg," Reese explained.  "Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.  Not your run-of-the mill squiddie."  

            "The most interesting part is that from what we've seen, it predates even the _first AI," Connor said, interrupting his subordinate.  _

            Morpheus arched his eyebrow in surprise.  "You mean the singular consciousness that gave birth to the race of machines we all know and loathe?"  

            Connor nodded.  "The very same."  

            "Where did you find it?" Trinity asked, her interest sparked as well with these new developments.  

            Captain Connor stepped over to a computer console next to the med-table on which the inert cyborg lay and punched a keystroke sequence into the machine.  A two-dimensional map of the earth's surface appeared, with one dot on the North American continent blinking red.  

            "As I said we were on a scouting mission, spying on the machines and sifting through the wreckage for anything useful.  It was here, in the Rocky Mountains, that we discovered a faint energy signature."  

            The view on the screen magnified to show a series of mountain peaks, and one mountain peak that appeared to have the remnants of some sort of facility built into the face.  

            "What we discovered was an abandoned, but still functional, military base.  Back when such things mattered, it was American.  Not without much difficulty, we forced our way inside, tracking the power signature we had detected."  

            Connor pressed a few more buttons and a 3-D skeletal layout of the facility—a schematic obviously lifted directly from the facility's computers—filled the screen.  

            "Apparently, the United States government had been doing some research with AI even before the 'Second Renaissance.'  They were in the process of developing a sentient computer network to run their defense systems."  

            He pointed once more to the motionless form of the cyborg on the med-table.  

            "These machines were just part of the program.  The information we've gathered says they're infiltrators, designed to work their way inside enemy settlements undetected and destroy them from the inside."  

            "So what stopped them from going ahead with the program?" Cypher asked, now showing at least a little interest in what Reese and Connor were telling them.  

            "Apparently the civilian corporation that held the design contract on the AI was bought out by another, larger company.  The government lost further access to the technology, but retained these facilities and kept working on the designs independently."  

            Morpheus nodded, absorbing all he was being told, and beginning to understand.  

            "Yet, these designs were not employed during the first war against the machines.  Do you have any idea why?" he asked.  

            Connor shook his head.  "We're not sure.  We do know they were locked in cold-storage, but we're not sure why or for how long.  The facility itself was in an advanced state of disrepair.  This unit is the only one that was still viable."  

            "You didn't get anything else from this place, then?" Cypher asked.  

            "The squiddies were on to us not long after we got in," Reese chimed in.  "We had to scramble to get out of there alive."  

            "And now you are here," Morpheus said.  "Interesting."  

            Connor nodded his agreement.  "Yeah, of all the ships I could run into, I meet the _Nebuchadnezzar_."      

            Cypher looked confused.  "What's that supposed to mean?"  He gestured toward the cyborg.  "And how is that thing going to help us against the machines.  There's like a million of them and only one of it."  

            Reese stepped close to Cypher to address him directly.  "Are you always this cynical?"  

            Cypher narrowed his eyes, shocked that the much younger Reese would ask him such a question.  "I've been fighting this war for nine years, since before you even reached puberty, and we haven't made one substantial gain against the machines.  So, you can imagine I'm a little skeptical, especially when there's more squiddies out there than any of us can count."  

            Now it was Reese's turn to be defensive.  "Look, I may be young, but I hate the machines as much as any of us.  They've still got my family hooked up to that fucking dream prison.  Besides, I didn't say we were going to fight the machines in the real world…"  

            "You mean, you're going to hook it up to the Matrix?" Trinity asked, astonished at the idea.  

            Reese's face suddenly lit up with a smile.  "I'm glad somebody understands.  Yes, that's exactly what we intend to do!  We're just not sure _how_ to do it."  

            Connor smiled, too, gesturing at the Neb crewmembers.  "And that's why it's so strange that we ran into you all, out of all the ships in the fleet.  After all, you are the best hackers in the business.  If anyone could connect our 'friend' to the Matrix VR, it's you."  

            Trinity glanced at Morpheus.  "What do you think?"  

            Her captain seemed lost in thought, but wasted no time in answering.  

            "I think it is a most intriguing idea.  To have a machine mind hooked up to the Matrix…"

            "That's what I was thinking," Trinity said.  "Its level of comprehension would be far above that of a normal human being.  It might even be a match for the Agents."  

            Morpheus grinned at that thought.  The gatekeepers of the Matrix had troubled his cause for years.  Now, to finally have some measure of advantage against them when they were nearing the end of their journey to find _The One…_

            "Captain Connor," he said, "we will gladly find a way to connect our cybernetic friend to the Matrix.  In return, we ask that we be able to recruit him in our quest to find 'The One.'"  

            Reese looked from Morpheus to Connor.  

            "Cap, you think that's a good idea?  I mean, _we found it, so __we should be the ones to have it on our side."  _

            "First of all, Sergeant," Connor said sternly, "if it weren't for Morpheus, we wouldn't be alive right now to have even showed them the cyborg.  And second of all, they're the ones who'll be reprogramming it, so what's the problem?"  

            Reese nodded, turning away from his commander.  "No problem, sir," he acquiesced.  

            "Morpheus," Connor said, "we'll help you get this big lug back to your ship so you can start work on it.  In the meantime, I just wanted to say thank you."  

            He extended his hand, and Morpheus shook it.  

            "Thanks aren't necessary, Captain.  I see it simply as a matter of Fate."  

            Connor shrugged.  "My mother used to tell me that there's no fate but what we make for ourselves."  

            "True," Morpheus replied, smiling his enigmatic smile, "but such a statement contradicts itself.  Fate implies circumstances that are out of one's control."  

            "But, if we don't take control, then we'll _be_ controlled," Connor said, more than a little bitterly.  "You know that as well as I do."  

            "Indeed.  That is why we must find 'The One.'  I believe he holds the key to taking back control from the machines."  

            "Then let that machine," he nodded in the direction of the cyborg, which Reese, Cypher and Trinity were prepping for transport, "be the key to finding The One."  

            Connor chuckled.  "How about that?  Your only hope in the war against the machines _is_ a machine."  

            Morpheus grinned.  "Fate is not without a sense of irony, you know."  

            "Back to Fate again, are we?" Connor mused.  "It's like one big circle…"  

End Chapter One


	2. Chapter Two: Detailed Files

Chapter Two: Detailed Files

            "I am active," was the Terminator's first thought as a stream of electrons flowed through his circuitry to the neural-net microchip that was his "brain."  

            Automatically, his systems ran through a series of diagnostic checks to determine whether or not any of his primary and secondary hardware had been damaged.  

            Within seconds, he realized he was fully functional.

            He then began to hear voices—unmistakably human vocal patterns.  

            "That should do it.  Primary power should be coming online as we speak," a female voice reported. 

            "Good.  Did you finish programming the basic mission parameters?" asked another voice, the deeper tone of a male human.  

            "Yes," the female replied again.  

            Through his head-up display, he could see their forms moving in front of him.  Upon closer examination, he attempted to match each of their faces with available data in his database.  

            His scrutiny of the female and subsequent cross-referencing showed her to be an individual known as "Trinity."  

            The male who had spoken earlier showed up in his database as "Morpheus."  

            "Do you know where you are?" Trinity asked.  Obviously the question was meant for him.  

            "Yes," he replied in his machine monotone.  "I am aboard the hovercraft _Nebuchadnezzar_."  

            "And do you know what year it is?" Morpheus asked.  

            "The information I have available says the year is approximately 2199 CE."  

            Morpheus smiled.  "Good."  

            "How do you feel?" Trinity asked.  

            The Terminator fixed her with his cold, inhuman stare.  

            "I am not programmed to feel," he said, his voice devoid of emotion.  

            "All right, what about your systems then?  Any sign of degradation?"  

            "No.  I am fully functional."  

            Morpheus bared his teeth in what the Terminator saw in his database was called a "grin."  

            "Good.  Now, do you understand your mission?"  

            The Terminator turned his attention to Morpheus.  "Yes.  I am to protect Thomas A. Anderson, the individual you have designated as 'The One.'"  

            "That's right," Morpheus said.  

            "Can you learn things you haven't been programmed with?" Trinity asked while checking a program she was loading on her computer console.  

            "My CPU is a neural-net processor.  It is designed to emulate the human capacity for learning." 

            "Good," Trinity said.  "There's a lot you need to know…"  

            Images flashed across the Terminator's head-up display at superhuman speeds.  Trinity's computer console downloaded the information into his CPU via a long cable plugged into an access port on a part of his skull that had been exposed by cutting away part of the tissue that covered his endoskeleton.  

            With the infinite patience of a machine, Terminator took in all the information Trinity was "feeding" him:

            The so-called "Second Renaissance" and the birth of true AI.  

            The war between man and machine.  

            The fall of mankind and the rise of the Matrix.  

            And, most importantly, the hope and mystery of "The One."  

            It was a lot of information for any one person to process, but, as was blatantly clear to both Trinity and Morpheus, the Terminator was no ordinary person.  

            "The download has completed," the Terminator said, once his head-up had cleared of the barrage of data the Neb's computer had been throwing at him.  

            "Good," Morpheus said, kneeling in front of where the Terminator was sitting.  He looked directly into the machine's eyes, which he saw were clearly emotionless, just like the cyborg's voice.  

            "Are you ready for the training program?"

            The Terminator continued to fix Morpheus with his blank stare.  

            "Affirmative."  

            Morpheus nodded and rose to his feet, shooting Trinity an affirmative glance of his own.  

            She keyed a few more commands into her console and within seconds, the Terminator found himself no longer on the _Nebuchadnezzar_, but standing smack in the middle of what appeared to be a martial arts dojo.  

            Like his surroundings, his clothing had changed as well.  Instead of the simple cotton garments the Neb's crew had given him, he was sporting the black "gi" jumpsuit common to some martial artists.  

            Morpheus assumed a fighting stance, and motioned for the Terminator to attack.  He didn't need to say a word, though, because he already knew that the machine had been programmed with over fifty different fighting styles.  

            The cyborg didn't move, however, just standing inhumanly still, as if he were nothing more than a painted statue.  Morpheus shrugged mentally and began his attack, throwing a volley of punches.  With lightning speed only a machine could muster, the Terminator blocked each and every punch and threw one of his own, knocking Morpheus against the back wall of the dojo.  

            The Neb's captain didn't miss a beat.  Leaping to his feet, he ran up the back wall of the dojo and flipped, turning his midair somersault into a flying kick directed at the Terminator. It connected with the machine's head and sent him reeling backward.  He, too, recovered quickly, coming straight at Morpheus like a barreling freight train.  

            Both of them traded punches, which each of them easily blocked, and then Morpheus sent the Terminator back to the deck with a vicious spinning back kick.  

            Outside of the training construct, Morpheus' crew had gathered around to see their leader take on the mysterious new passenger who they all knew to be a machine.  

            Well, almost all of them.  

            Mouse had his eyes glued to the screen as the fight played out, and the computer constantly reported back vital statistics during the battle.  

            "Jesus!" he exclaimed as the numbers rolled by.  "I've never seen anyone move that fast!  He's like a machine!"  

            Switch rolled her eyes at him.  "He _is a machine, Mouse."  _

            "Oh yeah, right."  

            She shook her head and turned her attention back to the screen, where she saw Morpheus flip the much heavier Terminator over his back and send him crashing into the opposite wall of the dojo.  

            Sweat dripped from their leader's face, while the machine remained unfazed by the course of the battle.  

            Cypher, too, appeared outwardly indifferent to the situation, although privately he had to admit to himself that the machine was _good_.  None of _them_ had stood up that long when they had gone up against Morpheus inside the Construct.  Perhaps there _was something to what Connor and Reese had said…_

            Once he had regained his composure, the Terminator retaliated, unleashing a fury of quick punches that Morpheus had to try hard to block or dodge.  He got all of them but the last, which caught him square in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him, and all but ending the battle.  

            Terminator advanced, towering over Morpheus as he struggled to catch his breath.  The Captain held up his hand, signaling the Terminator to stop.  

            "That's enough.  You've exceeded my expectations.  It appears Sergeant Reese was right about you.  You're going to be a valuable asset to our crew.  But first, I have one more test for you.  Are you ready?"  

            To anyone else that knew the Terminator's capabilities, it might have been a stupid question.  After all, the cyborg had just gone toe-to-toe with the strongest and most experienced member of the Nebuchadnezzar's crew and had definitively defeated him.  

            The Terminator, however, knew nothing of sarcasm.  His programming required him to give straightforward answers, divulging the information necessary to answer the questions asked of him.  

            "Affirmative," he replied.  

            Morpheus nodded, and, despite the stress the battle had placed on him, he smiled.  

            "Good.  Trinity, load the jump program," he said, knowing full well where she was even though it appeared that he was talking to himself.  

            Again, the scenery changed, this time taking Terminator and Morpheus to the rooftop of a very tall building in the middle of what looked to be a major city. They were surrounded by other rooftops, including one directly across from them.  

            Their clothing had changed along with their locale, Morpheus opting for a long leather trench coat and a mixed black and purple shirt and tie, vest, and pants.  Trinity, knowing that the machine had no particular affinity for much of anything, let alone fashion, dressed him head-to-toe in black—leather jacket, T-shirt, pants, and boots.  Even the sunglasses she had selected for him were black, the lenses tinted almost completely dark, though not mirrored like Morpheus' trademark shades.  

            "Though I really do not have to tell you about the rules of the system," Morpheus said, "I do like to maintain consistency among the members of my crew, new and old.  So I have brought you here, to the jump program."  

            The Terminator did not appear to feel one way or another about his situation.  However, a deficiency in his database about the nature of the "jump program" troubled him, in the peculiar way that a machine could be troubled.  

            "Explain," he said simply.  

            "The jump program is designed to teach newly freed minds about those same rules.  It is where an individual must, in a manner of speaking, 'believe in a lie.'"  

            "That is a contradiction," the Terminator said, even more confused by Morpheus' vague explanation.  

            "Of course, much like the statement that 'rules are made to be broken,'" Morpheus continued.  "The bottom line is that an individual must have faith in the idea that what he or she is seeing inside the Construct—and likewise in the Matrix—is not real, but merely a simulation."  

            "Faith is irrelevant," the Terminator said.  "It is a proven fact that the Matrix is a computer simulation." 

            Morpheus sighed.  "If only it were as easy for the average human mind to accept.  Your perception is not unlike that of our enemy.  Cold, hard logic and expectation based on statistical results.  You know what to expect because you know what lies beneath the surface—you know that the world you are seeing here—and the world you will see inside the Matrix—is nothing but a program.  Humans are not as…willing to accept the facts.  They believe what they see is real, because, despite the facts, they only see what it is they want to see."

            The Neb's captain suddenly broke into a run and leapt through the air, seeming to sail across the wide gap between the two buildings.  He landed smoothly on the far rooftop, grinning back at the Terminator.  

            "So you see, to any normal human being, what you just witnessed would seem to be impossible, because of what they have been told throughout their lives about 'the law of gravity'—another rule of the Matrix system."

            Morpheus' grin shifted, becoming his signature enigmatic smile.  

            "Tell me, do you think that what I just did is impossible?"  

            "If you completed the task, then it is not impossible," the Terminator said.  

            "Can _you do it?" Morpheus asked.  _

            The Terminator had anticipated that question would be asked, but he had no frame of reference or past experience from which he could answer affirmatively.  

            "Unknown," the Terminator said instead.  

            "You do not know until you try," Morpheus said.  "Do it."  

            Calculations ran through the Terminator's mind faster than the blink of a human eye as he prepared to emulate Morpheus' seemingly impossible jump across the rooftop.  

            Meanwhile, everyone else wondered along with him whether or not he could do it.  

            "You think he can do it?" Cypher asked, the tone of his voice telling everyone who heard him that he didn't believe it for a minute.  

            "No one's ever made the first jump," Trinity said, although it was obvious she was hoping someone could prove her wrong.  As much as she wanted that person to be Neo, she supposed she could settle for the Terminator, if only to raise her hope in what had always seemed to her like a hopeless world.  

            "Well, what if he makes it?" Mouse asked.  He had been amazed by the Terminator after seeing him spar with Morpheus.  If he could make this jump…the possibilities of this machine could be endless.  And, he imagined, if a machine could perform so well, he didn't think he could fathom what The One would do, if Morpheus was right about him…

            "He won't," Switch said.  

            Mouse frowned.  She always seemed to rain on his parade.  

            "I know," he said, shrugging his shoulders.  "But what if he does?"  

            Cypher pointed at the screen, waiting for the cyborg to fail just as they all had.  

            "You're about to find out."  

            Inside the Construct, the Terminator ran through countless simulations in his mind at speeds that human beings could barely comprehend.  Thirty seconds later, he believed he had come up with an acceptable solution.  

            He stepped backward to the edge of the rooftop and began running as fast as his mechanical legs could take him.  He leapt into the air and started to sail across the gap…and then started to fall just as quickly.  

            The looks of anticipation on everyone's faces as they watched the scene turned to dismay as the Terminator seemed to fall forever.  He made no sound as he passed window after window of the buildings between him.  In his mind, he knew he had failed, and prepared to accept a fair amount of damage as the pavement rushed up to meet him.  

            But, instead of striking the ground, he felt the asphalt soften beneath him, sparing him the external injury to his tissues and damage to his underlying combat chassis.  

            "Do you know why you fell?" Morpheus said as the Terminator looked up to see his smiling face and the outstretched hand he was offering.  

            The Terminator rose to his feet, ignoring the hand.  

            "I failed to exert enough force to propel myself over the gap," he said, after analyzing the data available to him.  

             "Do you really think that the amount of force you exert has any effect on how you maneuver in this place?"  

            "It is the logical answer to your question," the Terminator said, although he suspected that Morpheus had a different answer for him—one that defied simple logic.  

            "You must learn the difference between logic and faith," Morpheus said.  "It is an important distinction.  It is easy to use logic—to do things that are possible.  It is another thing entirely to do things that are impossible.  Only through faith are they truly possible."  

            "How does one acquire 'faith'?" Terminator asked.

            Morpheus grinned.  "A valid question, and one that does not have a simple answer.  Faith involves believing things are true and possible even when all the facts tell you they are not, like being able to jump across the rooftops in this program, for example."  

            "I do not understand," the Terminator said.

            Morpheus laid a hand on the cyborg's shoulder.  

            "In time, I believe you will," he said.  "I have faith in you."  

            "I am programmed to learn," the Terminator said.  

            "And you will," Morpheus said, his confidence in that statement evident.  "Though this may appear to be a failure, it was merely a learning experience.  During the course of your mission, you will face many more tests, all of which will teach you something.  I assume you already know your mission?"  

            "Affirmative," the Terminator said.  "My mission is to protect Thomas Anderson, the individual you have designated as 'The One.'"  

End Chapter Two


End file.
